Tom who played TV's Luke Duke / THU 4-2-15 / Latino Walk of Fame locale informally / Titular rock band whose film's IMDb rating goes up to 11 rather than 10 / Tiananmen Square demonstration suppressor / Order at rathskeller / Classic late-night comedy bit

Constructor: Joe Krozel and Timothy Polin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: THUS — black square for the letters T, H, U, S. Clues are various "arrangement[s] of letters in this grid," thus (!?):

Theme answers:

• 1A: CABANAS (clue: HUTS)
• 21A: SEAL (clue: SHUT)
• 8D: REAR (clue: TUSH)
• 43D: ELSE (clue: THUS)

Word of the Day: ARECA (4D: Tropical palm) —

Areca is a genus of about 50 species of palms in the family Arecaceae, found in humid tropical forests from China and India, across Southeast Asia to Melanesia. The generic name Areca is derived from a name used locally on the Malabar Coast of India. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hi all. I'm away from home for a few days, spending some time with family. Rather than dump the entirety of my blogging workload in PuzzleGirl's lap … here I am. Blogging the Thursday puzzle. I haven't done a puzzle of any kind since Sunday night. Liberating. I should probably take such breaks more often, because even though, as I look on this grid now, in the cold light of analytical reflection, it is clearly pock-marked and awkward, I kinda liked it. I liked the idea of it. I liked anagramming the letters and sussing out the theme answers (though there were very few of them, covering very little grid space). I also loved the long Downs. They were so good that they actually effectively distracted me from some of the terrible short stuff (like EDIN, SSS, ITELL, IME, UNCA, RONAS). There's something GREEN PAINT-ish about GET EXERCISE, but I think it just passes the stand-alone smell test. I think it would be better clued in relation to "advice" or "doctor's advice," but no matter (side note—I quite enjoyed my initial stupid wrong answer: GYM EXERCISE, considering it a. isn't a verb phrase, which the clue clearly calls for, and b. contains the word "gym," which is already in the clue).


I forgot about Tom WOPAT. Until now (38A: Tom who played TV's Luke Duke). I rewrote US law and made CACTI illegal to import for a few minutes there (49A: Plants that are illegal to import => COCAS). I had just one MAN ON at first (25A: Favorable situation for sluggers => MEN ON). Otherwise, I found the rest of it pretty DENG easy. This one won me over by being *different* and by having fabulous *long* answers. Iffy short stuff eroded my affection, but not enough to turn me. Not an A-PLUS, but fine work nonetheless.

["Why don't you just make 10 louder…?]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Peter Gordon's "Fireball Newsflash Crosswords" is open for 2015-16 subscriptions right now. These are right-up-to-the-minute, current-events-based puzzles. On the easy side. Great fun for solvers of all skill levels. Here's the info:

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Kate's kisser in classic tongue twister / WED 4-1-15 / 1925 Pulitzer Prize Edna Ferber / Smarter Planet company / Kurtis Mayfield's Move / Region off the Cote d'Azur / Irvin first art director of The New Yorker

Constructor: Sharon Delorme

Relative difficulty: Wednesdayish

THEME: Hijinks! — A selection of jolly pranks for April Fools' Day.

Word of the Day: INDC [Visiting the Library of Cong., say] —

Hmmm, turns out this isn't a word. My bad. But I'd love to visit the Library of Kong.

• • •

Howdy, puzzlers. Rex is on vacation somewhere, so this is Doug filling in for PuzzleGirl, who is probably asleep right now. And I don't blame her. We had an amazing and utterly exhausting weekend at the ACPT.

I considered doing some elaborate April Fools' Day post, but I'm sure Rex would get cranky emails if I posted a fake grid or made up extra theme entries. So let's just dive into today's puzzle.

Theme answers:

• 18A: JOY BUZZER ["Put 'er there, pal!"]
• 24A: DRIBBLE GLASS ["Here, have a drink"] 
• 38A: SQUIRTING FLOWER ["Smell my corsage"] — This one sounds weird. I can't imagine someone coming up to me and saying "Smell my corsage." And sticking your nose into a woman's corsage is a good way to get your face slapped.
• 51A: TRICK CANDLES ["Happy birthday! Make a wish and blow"] 
• 62A: PRANKSTER [Speaker of the clue for 18-, 24-, 38-, and 51-Across] 

So we've got a collection of pranks someone found in an old comic book ad. I once bought a joy buzzer (and a pair of x-ray glasses) from a comic book ad. The joy buzzer was a huge disappointment. Instead of delivering the shocking agony shown in the ad, all it did was vibrate weakly in my victim's palm. Where's the joy in that? The x-ray glasses, however, worked like a charm. I use them to watch HBO through my neighbor's wall.

I like the old-timey vibe of the pranks, but I bet this puzzle disappointed some solvers, who were hoping for a wacky April Fools' Day-esque gimmick in the grid and/or the clues. Maybe the trick is that there is no trick. Did you ever think of that? So meta.

Bullets:

• 1A: SO BIG! [1925 Pulitzer Prize winner for Edna Ferber] — The actual title doesn't have an exclamation point, but I think it needs one. I'm trying really hard not to type "That's what she said," so let's just move on. 
• 32A: ESAU [Kate's kisser in a classic tongue twister] — I have no idea. Let me Google that: "I saw Esau kissing Kate. I saw Esau, he saw me. And she saw I saw Esau." I want to add "... by the seashore" in there somewhere.

• 17A: STIEG [Larsson who wrote "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"] — Good timing on this clue. I read today that a sequel to the late Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy will be published in September. Cool.
• 42D: LOVE/HATE [Kind of relationship] — Nice entry. I also like 9D: COBWEB [Sign of disuse].
• 31A: OEN / 63D: NEO and 57A: OTRO / 2D: ORTO — Two sets of reversed entries. That's kind of weird. And they're all kinda ugly.
• 59D: ABBA [Group with the hit 1978 album "The Album"] — Let's go out on a high note with an ABBA/Van Halen mash-up.

Signed, Doug Peterson, Laughing Boy of CrossWorld

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